Hukim Section

1
Hukim Section

• Lesson 21

2
History of Bamot Law

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3
Reasons for Centralized

• Prevent Idolatry
• Prevent pagan worship practices
• Limit animal sacrifices - Rambam

4
Guide of the Perplexed III32

• As the sacrificial service is not the primary
  object while supplications, prayers, and similar
  kinds of worship are nearer to the primary
  object, and indispensable for obtaining it, a
  great difference was made in the Law between
  these two kinds of service. The one kind, which
  consists in offering sacrifices, although the
  sacrifices are offered to the name of God, has
  not been made obligatory for us to the same
  extent as it had been before. We were not
  commanded to sacrifice in every place, and in
  every time, or to build a temple in every place,
  or to permit any one who desires to become priest
  and to sacrifice. On the contrary, all this is
  prohibited unto us. Only the temple has been
  appointed in the place which the Lord shall
  choose (Dt 1226). In no other place is it
  allowed to sacrificeand only members of a
  particular family were allowed to officiate as
  priests. All these restriction served to limit
  this kind of worship and keep it within those
  bounds within which God did not think it
  necessary to abolish sacrificial service
  altogether. But prayer and supplication can be
  offered everywhere and by every person. This same
  is the case with the commandment of sisit,
  mezuzah, tefillin, and similar kinds of divine
  service.

5
Which Commandment?

• The sanctuary is to be located where Hashem
  chooses to place His name (Deut. 125, 21) and
  causes His name to reside (ibid. 1211). His
  names presence is the crucial element in the
  sites significance and concomitantly of the
  prohibition of other sites. The ban on the latter
  appears to be presented as an application or
  expansion of Decalogue Commandment 3, ?? ?????,
  which insists on the extreme reverence due His
  name. Sacrificing even to Him outside the central
  location in what must consequently be
  unauthorized sanctuaries - even monotheistic - is
  raising or applying His name in vain and this
  explains the textual placement of this passage.
• Rabbi Shamah